How OpenAI Builds Products: an exclusive discussion with the Head of Developer Experience (Romain Huet, OpenAI) - #144

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In this episode, I sit down with Romain Huet, Head of Developer Experience at OpenAI. I had the chance to meet Romain during my trip to San Francisco last October, when I flew out to attend OpenAI’s annual DevDay conference — the epicenter of the company’s biggest announcements in years. Before joining OpenAI, Romain spent years building products at Stripe and has been living in San Francisco for nearly a decade, right at the heart of the tech scene.

In our conversation, we dive into how Codex is reshaping the way products are built, what “developer experience” really means at OpenAI, how developer feedback influences their roadmap, and how AI is transforming product and engineering teams from the inside out. We also explore the pace of innovation within OpenAI, how product development there differs from traditional companies, and how Europe is quickly catching up in the global AI race.
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[00:00] Introduction

[00:30] Why Developer Experience is strategic

[01:29] Overview of OpenAI’s developer product suite

[02:04] Codex: new features and GPT-5 Codex

[03:17] Live demo: building an app without code

[04:11] Codex beyond engineering teams

[05:28] Codex is now generally available

[05:57] Advice for using Codex effectively

[07:15] How OpenAI uses developer signals

[08:56] Ex. of developer feedback impact

[10:51] OpenAI’s hiring approach

[12:17] Fastest-growing OpenAI products

[13:49] Metrics to assess product success

[15:14] Voice as a new interface for AI

[16:45] How OpenAI sunsets features

[18:33] Building products: Stripe vs OpenAI

[20:36] Codex capabilities

[22:21] Product / Research collaboration

[24:08] State of the European tech ecosystem

[26:19] Building AI products in 3 years

[28:02] Evolution of product and engineering roles

[29:15] Europeans in key roles at OpenAI

[30:42] Exporting Silicon Valley DNA

[31:08] Wrap-up and thank you

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